Stolen Childhoods: When War Turns the Children of Eastern Congo into Targets

FICAC Mission Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo
In eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, being born a child has become a dangerous fate.Here, war does not only destroy homes and villages it steals childhoods, breaks bodies, and erases futures.
Between January and February 2025, more than 1,500 children were recruited or used by armed groups across North Kivu, South Kivu, and parts of Tanganyika, according to local civil society organizations met during the mission of the International Forum for Children Affected by Conflict (FICAC).Behind this number are 1,500 interrupted lives. 1,500 silenced cries. 1,500 stolen dreams.
Fear as a way of life
In Luvungi, Sange, Kamanyola, Kabare, Masisi, and Goma, children tell the same story over and over again:fear has become their daily companion.
Fear of going to school.Fear of walking to the water point.Fear of never coming back home.
Armed men appear suddenly in schools, on roads, in neighborhoods.They take children. Sometimes in front of classmates. Sometimes in front of powerless parents.They lead them into the forest, far from witnesses, far from help.
“I was carrying my school bag. They told me to drop it. That was the last day I went to school,” said a 14-year-old boy met in Masisi.
Forced to become soldiers
In the bush, children are transformed.An оружие is placed in their hands before they fully understand what war means.They are used as porters, guards, fighters.They are taught to obey, to harden their hearts, sometimes to kill.
Girls endure an even deeper cruelty. Many are raped, forced into domestic slavery, or taken as ‘wives’ by fighters. Their pain often remains invisible, buried under fear and shame.
“When a girl comes back, she is never the same. And many never come back at all,” said a woman in Kabare.
A generation left behind
In Goma, displaced children live crowded into makeshift shelters.No stable school. Little food. Almost no medical care.Their childhood is reduced to waiting waiting for the fighting to stop, waiting for help, waiting for the world to notice them.
“What we are witnessing is unbearable. We are losing an entire generation,” said a local child protection activist.
These crimes are not accidents.They are not “collateral damage.”They are systematic, repeated, and known.
Silence is also violence
The recruitment and use of children by armed groups are war crimes.Yet in eastern Congo, impunity continues to protect the perpetrators.
Every day without action is a day another child disappears.Every silence becomes permission.
An urgent call to conscience
Local civil society organizations from North Kivu, South Kivu, and Tanganyika, united through the FICAC mission, raise a desperate call:
· To the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo: protect children now.
· To the international community: stop looking away act now.
· To the International Criminal Court (ICC): investigate these crimes and hold perpetrators accountable now.
Saving children is saving humanity
The children of eastern Congo are not statistics.They have names. They have dreams. They have school notebooks left open on empty desks.
Abandoning them means allowing violence to decide the future.Protecting them means refusing to let war win.

FICAC Info